DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

All I wanted was a new water heater.

OK, well, I wanted a new water and I wanted it to last for 20 years. That doesn’t seem so difficult. In theory, all you’d have to do is:

• Install a second anode.
• Install a curved inlet tube.
• Upgrade the drain valve.
• Flush the tank every two years.
• Replace the anodes every five years.

But in practice, water heater science is not the aspiration of most of the guys who sell or install them. Or as one wholesaler said, “Anode? Why on earth would you want to change the anode?”

Then, too, there’s the fact that California’s regulations for water heaters have changed twice in six months. As far as I can tell this has had the effect of putting just about every model of water heater on permanent backorder.

We have the misfortune of needing a “shorty,” a slightly less tall model of water heater. This cuts the selection to, let’s see… one. We had one model to pick from. So, on the bright side, we didn’t need to spend any time agonizing over which of the one available model to purchase. But it took two weeks to locate one of the one model that we could actually buy.

The new unit doesn’t have a curved inlet tube. Our plumber was unsure whether a curved inlet tube could be installed, so I let it go. That was one of my must-have modifications, but I’m all about compromise, especially when not compromising might mean taking ice-cold showers for two months.

The anode upgrade turned into a bigger project than I imagined. What should have been a five-minute task turned into an hour’s hard work — for me! Most people, they let the plumber in the front door, and then they write a check an hour later. That’s the extent of the involvement. But not when it’s my water heater — somehow I ended up sitting in the driveway for an hour with a wood rasp, trying to reduce the diameter of the plastic fitting on the new combination rod to make it fit into the new tank.

So my hands were raw and I’d been breathing aluminum shavings for an hour, and then the plumber knocked out the old heater’s exhaust pipe with his head. Which meant I had to crawl into the attic, which I hate, and hold the chimney pipe still while the plumber re-attached the exhaust pipe from below.

Sometimes I think my personal hell will be to work tech support for a company that uses Outlook Express. But other times, like today, I realize that my personal hell will involve crawling around in my attic, getting tangled up in Romex, laying painfully across studs with all my body weight supported by three or four little two-inch-square patches where bones touch wood. One hand will invariably be pressed into a pile of fiberglass insulation. And don’t forget the dust cloud — fiberglass dust is mandatory in this hell. Or in my attic, whichever; they’re the same.

While I was up there the plumber related that he’d fallen through a client’s ceiling once. I had that to chew on that while trying to crab-walk out of the passageway pictured here, eyes watering, feeling scratchy everywhere, wondering how long it takes to catch asbestosis. All in all I think I’d rather have been troubleshooting Outlook Express. Especially at the moment when I scooted along a narrow piece of plywood and winced as an enormous splinter buried itself in my ass.

We had a timer installed on the well pump today. The “Pump Man” related that he’d just installed the same timer the previous day, for another solar-power home.

“So you’re on a Time-of-Use meter, right?” he asked. I was pleasantly surprised that he knew the electric-utility lingo. And then he declared, “That means you pay three times as much for power as I do.”

Erm. That’s true, in a sense, but it misses the point entirely. If you want to boil the essence of grid-tied solar power generation down into one sentence, a five-second elevator pitch, then the cost of peak-hour electricity is exactly the wrong thing to emphasize. It’s misleading. TOU pricing is actually a benefit for solar users, even though it sounds expensive.

“Well. The point is,” I began, making the distinction that what the pump man had offered was not the point, “the rig of my roof will pay for itself in about 10 years, and then I get free power for 20 years.” That’s the elevator pitch: free power for 20 years. And it’s Earth-friendly.

The timer ended up being a simple thing: power goes in 24x7, but no power comes out between noon and 6pm. This should be a big help in reducing peak-period usage.

During a recent sunny afternoon, I checked the meters, expecting to see a healthy surplus of emissions-free electricity feeding my power-greedy neighbors. But instead I saw that I was eating up every watt of available power, even though the only identifiable draw was the refrigerator. The problem was the well pump. It’s only a 1/10th horsepower but apparently that’s enough to essentially zero out my PV array.

On a recent daytrip to Bodega Head, we hiked down a steep trail to the beach to spend an hour exploring the tidepools. And to occasionally get chased out of them by a big incoming wave.

The official trails runs along the ridgetop in the right third of the panorama. The descent is easier than it looks from above, which probably explains why we so rarely see people at the bottom.

President Bush’s approval ratings have been steadily declining since the day he took office. There have been three exceptions to that trend:

• the 9/11 terrorist attacks
• the US invasion of Iraq
• the capture of Hussein

Graphically, Bush’s numbers tell a compelling story of a failing administration.

I made this graph after wondering what Bush’s chances of re-election are. I thought they were much better than this. If the election were held today, according to Gallup’s approval ratings, Bush would get about 49% of the vote — which in the opinion of the US Supreme Court is a majority. I meant that to be a joke, but it’s actually not funny.

Anyway, as I studied this graph I realized that the President’s staffmembers must be studying it too. The Bush administration is known for being media-savvy; get the full scoop on the president’s “advance team” of choreographers, lighting designers, and staging experts in this NYT article, Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights. If Bush has a personal lighting designer, he’s certain to have someone who reads the polls every day.

Which means Bush knows the only thing that can rescue his declining approval ratings is an act of aggression. Look at the graph — war is the only thing Bush ever got respect for.

Where does that leave us, in these nine months before the election? Due for conflict, I’m afraid.

And it’s worse even than that. The capture of Hussein was a small blip on the graph. The invasion of Iraq was slightly larger. The one thing that really sent Bush’s approval ratings through the ceiling was his macho-aggressive speech after the WTC bombing.

So, in terms of approval ratings, the best thing that could happen to the Bush administration would be for the US to be attacked again. That’s a pretty ugly conflict of interest.

(The data in the graph was collected by the Gallup Organization and reported at PollingReport.com. For those of you who doubt my graph is real, feel free to download the source data I used. Dump it into Excel and see for yourselves.)

In search of a band to join, I traded several emails with a guy whose band seeks a new drummer. I was impressed by the guy’s ability to articulate what he was looking for. He drew extended comparisons to various drummers and bands I respect, citing as influences numerous artists I like.

At one point he wrote of his band’s original music, “it’s almost a perfect blend of the Police and Rush.” This had an impact. I like both those bands, and I think both Stewart Copeland and Neil Peart are amazingly talented at the drum kit. (I bought the Oysterhead disc just to hear Stewart Copeland play.)

So I went to the band’s next gig to check them out before committing to an audition. I didn’t really know what to expect, but my anticipation level was high.

Here’s the first clue that I might be in for a surprise. The gig was part of a local Heavy Metal Wednesday show. I noticed, but drew no useful conclusions.

Here’s the second clue that I might be in for a surprise. There was a smoke machine onstage. I began to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.

Here’s the final clue that I was definitely in for a surprise: the lights come up, a huge power-chord sounds through the PA, and the four guys standing on stage begin head-banging in unison. With smoke. And then the singer started barking.

I heard no Police. I heard no Rush. Actually I heard no melody either. I mean no disrespect to the band; each one of the guys had plenty of talent. The music was very much not my style though… too little dynamic change, too few hooks, too much distortion, too much straight time. Part of the problem was the mix; it wasn’t bad per se, but I couldn’t discern much music through the wall of noise.

I laughed at how surprised I had been. I really hadn’t asked the right questions. But now I’ve got a good checklist for next time. (“You guys don’t do any unison head-banging, do you? Will I be expected to do unison head-banging? What about studded collars and wristbands, are those actually required?”)